D. B. Wijetunga a man who restored democracy - The Times of London

Walter JAYAWARDHANA

A senior Sri Lankan political analyst noted later that the new President “set about his work in his own simplistic, inimitable fashion”, ushering in a “more politically free era

The Times, in an obituary called former President D. B. Wijetunga as a man who restored democratic freedom after the assassination of President Ranasinghe Premadasa by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

But The Times, following the Western practice, called his identification of Sri Lanka’s trouble as a terrorist problem and not as an ethnic problem a gaffe but Sri Lankan expatriates in London said Wijetunga has been proved beyond any doubt by history itself. The obituary said: “Wijetunga was quickly and unanimously chosen by a stunned Parliament to take over from Premadasa as acting President for the remaining 18 months of his term of office.

Press and trade union freedoms, curtailed by the authoritarian Premadasa under a state of emergency, were restored, if only temporarily.

Sri Lanka seemed to breathe easier now that the combative Premadasa was no longer in power.”

The obituary said, the quietly-spoken, fastidiously polite Wijetunga brought a much needed change of tone that cooled the hothouse political atmosphere, at least for a while. A senior Sri Lankan political analyst noted later that the new President “set about his work in his own simplistic, inimitable fashion”, ushering in a “more politically free era”.

But without substantiating it The Times said one of these inimitable traits was to put his foot in it, such as when he declared that Sri Lanka did not have an ethnic problem, only a terrorist problem.